Name: ReReadz
Address: GB
Price range: £

Compare buyback sites, eBay, charity shops and ReReadz to find the best place to sell used books in the UK in 2026. Real prices, real pros and cons.

# Where to Sell Used Books in the UK in 2026: A Reader's Honest Guide If your shelves are bowing under the weight of paperbacks you will never read again, you are sitting on a small pile of cash. The question is where to send those books to get the best price, the least faff, and the warmest feeling that they will end up in another reader's hands rather than a pulping plant. I have spent the last few months testing every realistic option on the UK market: the buyback giants, the auction sites, the charity shops, and the new wave of community marketplaces. This is the honest, no-fluff comparison you wish your favourite book blog would write. ## The four ways to sell used books in the UK There are essentially four routes, and they trade off speed, money, and effort in very different ways. 1. Buyback websites that pay you a fixed price per ISBN 2. General marketplaces like eBay and Facebook Marketplace 3. Donation to charity shops or the British Heart Foundation 4. Specialist book marketplaces such as ReReadz Let us go through each one with the prices I actually got for the same six-book test bundle in March 2026: two recent paperback novels, one cookbook, one childrens hardback, and two non-fiction trade paperbacks in very good condition. ### Buyback websites: fast cash, rock-bottom prices We Buy Books, Ziffit, Music Magpie, and World of Books all use the same basic flow. You scan the barcode, they quote you a price, you print a label, and you drop a box at the Post Office or with Evri. A few days later, the money lands in your bank account. The convenience is unbeatable. The price is brutal. My six-book bundle was offered between £2.40 and £3.85 across the four sites combined. That is roughly 40 to 65 pence per book. The cookbook, which still retails new for £18.99, was valued at 30p. These sites work on volume. They are buying books to resell at a margin, often through Amazon or their own shopfronts. If you have hundreds of books to clear quickly, they are a sensible option. If you have a small pile of titles that still hold real value, you are leaving most of the money on the table. A note on rejections. All four buyback sites refused at least one book in my test bundle, usually because the ISBN was either too old, too obscure, or already overstocked in their warehouse. Anything they reject either gets returned at your cost or recycled, depending on the small print. ### eBay and Facebook Marketplace: better prices, more work Listing on eBay is the traditional route. You can usually get two to four times what a buyback site offers, especially for cookbooks, art books, textbooks, and anything from a popular series. The catch is the work. Photographs, descriptions, condition grading, postage calculations, buyer messages, the occasional dispute. For a single £6 paperback, the time cost is rarely worth it. Facebook Marketplace works for collection-only bundles in your local area. It is brilliant for clearing 30 children's books in one go to a parent down the road. It is dreadful for posting a single novel to a buyer in Aberdeen. Neither platform is built for books specifically. There is no ISBN scanner, no condition guide that buyers actually trust, and no built-in protection if a buyer claims a book never arrived. ### Charity shops: the easy, generous option Oxfam Books, the British Heart Foundation, Barnardo's, your local hospice, and dozens of independent charity shops will gladly accept a bag of paperbacks. You get no money, but you get a clean conscience and a tidy hallway. For books that the buyback sites have rejected, this is often the best home. Some charity shops, including Oxfam, will gift-aid your donation if you sign the form, which adds 25 percent to the value the charity receives at no cost to you. Worth doing. The downside is that charity shops are overwhelmed. Many will quietly recycle a percentage of donated books that do not sell within a few weeks. If you want every book to find a reader, donating in bulk is not the most effective route. ### Specialist book marketplaces: the middle path This is where ReReadz comes in, and I am going to be transparent about my bias because I have spent the last six months selling on the platform. The trade-off ReReadz offers is roughly this: better prices than buyback sites, less work than eBay, more confidence than Facebook Marketplace, and the satisfaction of selling directly to another reader rather than a warehouse algorithm. The ReReadz workflow looks like this. You scan the ISBN with your phone, the title and cover auto-fill, you pick the condition from a clear five-step guide, you accept the smart-pricing suggestion or set your own, and the listing is live in under a minute. When a book sells, you get a packing slip by email, drop the parcel off, and the money lands in your wallet seven days after the buyer confirms delivery. For my six-book test bundle, ReReadz suggested prices that totalled £34.20 against the £2.40 to £3.85 the buyback sites offered. After the flat 7.5 percent platform fee, I would walk away with £31.64. Not life-changing, but more than ten times what the buyback sites would have paid. The catch with marketplaces is that books only sell when someone wants them. A niche academic title might sit on the shelf for months. A current bestseller in good condition tends to sell within days. If you need cash this week, buyback is faster. If you can wait a fortnight or two, you keep significantly more of what your books are actually worth. ## Quick comparison table | Route | Price for my 6-book test | Time to list | Time to payout | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Buyback sites | £2.40 to £3.85 | 5 minutes | 3 to 5 days | | eBay | Estimated £18 to £24 | 45 minutes | After buyer pays | | Facebook Marketplace | Estimated £10 to £15 | 20 minutes | Cash on collection | | Charity shop | £0 (plus warm fuzzies) | 0 minutes | Never | | ReReadz | £31.64 (after fees) | 6 minutes | 7 days after delivery | ## What I actually recommend If you have a single bag of mixed paperbacks and you genuinely do not care about the money, donate them to your local hospice shop. They will be grateful and somebody will read them. If you have a few dozen titles in good condition and you can spare 10 minutes a day for a fortnight, list them on a specialist marketplace like ReReadz. You will earn ten times what a buyback site offers and your books will go directly to other readers. If you have a literal van full of books from a clearance, deceased estate, or library de-accession, buyback sites are still the practical choice. The price per book is awful, but the logistics of any other route would eat your time alive. If you have rare, signed, or first-edition books, do your homework before selling anywhere. AbeBooks, Biblio, and specialist auction houses will pay multiples of the high-street value for genuine collectibles. A 30-second Google search for the title plus the words "first edition value" can save you from giving away £200 for £2. ## A small word on sustainability Every used book that finds a new reader is one fewer book printed from virgin pulp. The publishing industry consumed roughly 32 million trees worth of wood in 2024. Resale and second-hand reading directly displace that demand. It is one of the rare consumer choices where the cheapest option for you is also the kindest one for the planet. If you would like to start selling, ReReadz is free to list and takes minutes to set up. Scan the books at the bottom of your wardrobe and see what they are worth before they end up in the recycling. Happy reading and happy clearing.

Where to Sell Used Books in the UK in 2026: A Reader's Honest Guide

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